Indexes Rally To New Highs, But Volatility May Surge Ahead

 | Oct 30, 2019 01:11AM ET

Over the past few weeks and months, a number of key economic data has continued to rally the US major indexes towards new highs, hopes of a US/China trade deal, a continued shift of capital in the US markets for protection and safety, and moderately strong US economic indicators and an earning season that appears to be moderately strong for Q3 of 2019. The interesting facet of this move higher is that it is happening while trading volume has diminished dramatically in the SPY. The futures contracts, the ES,YM, and NQ, continue to show relatively strong volume activity though.

Additionally, the overnight Repo markets have risen to the attention of many skilled analysts. The concern is that the continued US Fed support of the overnight Repo facility may be a band-aid attempt to support a gaping credit crisis that is brewing just outside of view. We’ve been doing quite a bit of research over the past few weeks regarding this Repo market support by the US Fed and we believe there is more to it than many believe. We believe certain institutional banking firms may be at extreme risks related to derivative investments, shadow banking activities and/or global commodity/stock/currency/asset risk exposure. The only answer we have for the extended Repo facility at increasing levels is that the institutional banking system is starting to “fray around the edges”. Thus, we believe some larger credit risk problems may be just around the corner.

Our longer-term analysis continues to suggest that “all is fine – until it is not”. Our belief that a capital shift that has been taking place over the past 5+ years where foreign capital continues to pour into the US markets is driving US stock market prices higher. There is evidence that the capital shift into the US has slowed over the past 5+ months, yet one would not notice this by looking at these longer-term charts. The point we are trying to make today is that price peaks near current highs have, historically, been met with strong resistance and collapsed by 8 to 15% on average.

h3 S&P500 Index – 2 Month Long Term Chart/h3

This ES 2 Month chart highlights the resistance channel initiated near the 2003 lows (the lower YELLOW price channel line) and how that level has continued to act as moderate price resistance throughout most of 2017, 2018 and 2019. We believe that price, at current levels, must either rally above this level and be capable of sustaining higher price levels (which would be supported by stronger forward guidance, earnings, economic data and/or investments), or will attempt to rotate lower from these current highs because price is simply unable to support/sustain higher price levels given the current global economic data.

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When we attempt to rationalize the potential for price given the Repo issues, the current global economic data/news, the uncertainty of a US Presidential election cycle only 12 months away, the BREXIT deal hanging out in the near future and recent currency rotations, we believe is transitional shift is taking place in the markets in preparation for some type of surge in volatility associated with a very strong potential for extended price rotation.

h3 /h3